Birdwatch: Short-eared owl

It was Christmas Eve, an hour before dusk. The snow lay deep, and crisp, and fairly even, an unusual sight in Somerset, especially so early in the winter. When the bird flew past, it came as a surprise. Not just because it was a short-eared owl – the first I had seen in my new home county – but because most birds had already fled the cold weather, and the fields behind my home were devoid of life.

Short-eared owls are big birds, not far off the size of a buzzard. Unlike most British owls they are diurnal, hunting over rough grassland for voles and other small mammals on broad, silent wings.

But this one burst out of the hedge beside me in a flurry of feathers, then laboured low across the field. Against the brightness of the snow it looked darker than usual: a subtle melange of blacks, browns, greys and buffs, each shade blending into the others yet also managing, paradoxically, to stand out.

Finally the owl reached the other side of the field, and sat momentarily on a broad hedgerow. As owls often do, it stared at me, its custard-yellow eyes visible even at a distance. Then it took off, gaining height as it flew up into the sky, until finally disappearing from view.

This was almost a year ago, during last December's cold spell, when my parish – and indeed much of Britain – was transformed by snow into a Christmas card scene. Things are very different this year: after one of the mildest Novembers on record, it has turned colder, but so far there has been no prolonged freeze.

Paradoxically, though, short-eared owls are ten-a-penny this year. Seven have been seen on the southern half of the Somerset levels, not far from the reintroduced flock of cranes; both bring a touch of continental Europe to this little corner of England. For the owls are visitors from the east, having crossed the North Sea to find food here, on the milder western fringes of the continent.

When I was growing up, I would regularly see short-eared owls in winter: on the north Kent marshes, in East Anglia, and once even on my local patch – Wraysbury Gravel Pits, just west of Heathrow.

My most memorable sighting came one autumn, when an exhausted bird flew in off the sea at Cley in Norfolk, and flopped down on to the beach, before eventually recovering and heading inland. And one spring, when I was walking through Cambridge, another short-eared owl flew overhead against the blue May sky.

But as the years went by, the sightings of this charismatic species fell away, and eventually I realised that it must be getting scarcer. That's what happens sometimes: a bird you always enjoyed seeing, but never considered particularly rare, simply fades out of your life. So let's hope that my memorable sighting last winter, and this year's crop of invading owls, are just the start of a comeback. For there are few other species I would enjoy seeing more regularly than the short-eared owl.